Retail

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THE REALITY OF LUXURY RETAILING

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THE REALITY OF LUXURY RETAILING

Luxury retail is thriving in Australia

- as could be seen by the lines of people on the footpath, queued up almost daily to get into Luxury stores in capital cities. The recent investment that Tiffany committed to in their new Sydney flagship store also implies confidence in the local market, and Paspaley had started a process to select a designer to upgrade their beautiful Martin Place Sydney flagship store, with a $10 million plus, budget.

High end luxury vehicle marques were also experiencing a great result - Rolls Royce predicted that their sales would increase by between 10-20 percent in Australia in 2019-20 and Lamborghini, Porsche and Ferrari also had a similar story. Upmarket furniture retailers, were generally also going from strength to strength, not only with imported European furniture, but also with high end Australian designed furniture.

So, does the 2020 Covid-19 disruption to Luxury retailing require us to completely rethink the strategies?

BRICKS AND MORTAR IN AN E-COMMERCE WORLD

BRICKS AND MORTAR IN AN E-COMMERCE WORLD

On Saturday, 19th May 2001, the “Bricks & Mortar” retail world changed forever - even if we didn’t know it back then.

On that date Apple opened its first stand alone store in Tyson’s Corner Shopping Mall in McLean, Virginia - near Washington D.C. They also opened a second store in the Glendale Galleries in Glendale, California, on that same day. Many believe that the stores were designed by Steve Jobs, but they weren’t - the stores were conceived by a Mr Ron Johnson.

Prior to Apple, Ron Johnson was the Vice President for Merchandising at Target Corporation. Steve Jobs hired him to develop the new stores for Apple, after he had instigated an innovative collaboration between American Architect, Michael Graves and Target in 1999, resulting in Graves designing “designer” kettles, toasters and small kitchen items - which transformed Target from

4 KEY ATTRIBUTES FOR ENGAGING WITH CUSTOMERS

4 KEY ATTRIBUTES FOR ENGAGING WITH CUSTOMERS

Customer Engagement.

Two words we are told should be forming the basis of a successful retail strategy, but rarely do the come with a disclaimer to explain how to put the concept of better engagement into practice.

The Four Attributes of Customer Engagement is perhaps the clearest outlining of how an organisation can become more engaged with its audience, basing itself on the fundamental active, emotional, rational and ethical qualities that determine an organisations’s brand value and how these factors can drive deeper engagement.

All organisations in the private and public sector connect with customers, most often through the work of the marketing, sales and customer service departments.